This was largely a result of Seymour Papert and his work on constructionism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructionist_learning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

This was largely a result of Seymour Papert and his work on constructionism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructionist_learning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructionist_learning The trend has been away from this as programming has gotten more difficult and the general decline in resources for developing and updating school curricula.